


Black/White

by childoffantasy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Analysis of really minor stuff, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 03:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2453351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/childoffantasy/pseuds/childoffantasy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When The Black Widow doesn't have to be anybody specific, when she's just Nat, the colours black and white take on just that bit more significance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black/White

**Author's Note:**

> So there I was, scrolling through my Tumblr dash, avoiding my homework for the long weekend, as you do, and what do I spy but a gifset (http://childoffantasy.tumblr.com/post/99974759324), with tags pointing out how both Natasha and Steve are kind of exposed but she's in black and he's in white. Being as I didn't want to do my homework, I went and wrote this in about half an hour and didn't edit. So it's for urulokid, for better or for worse.

Nat had a bit of a thing about the colours white and black. When she was just being “Nat,” no Natalie, no cover stories, as few masks as she ever felt comfortable losing around people (because the masks never went entirely away, but she would let the nonessential ones fall away, until it was just the ones holding her together: the mask that said she was fine and not always hurting over what she had done, or the mask that said she was hurting just enough) she had a thing about white and black anyway. She was good at her job, and so when The Black Widow was someone who wasn’t Nat, colour was irrelevant, but Nat had what were perhaps stronger than preferences, though less than full blown neuroses (all of the spare got trimmed away in her line of work; fat, habits, and mental blocks alike).

Given the choice, Nat would always wear black or some other dark or dull colour next to her skin, not white. Bras, socks, underwear, even tank tops and t-shirts. Probably this would come as a surprise to absolutely no one who had met Nat, and really nor would her reasons behind it, but nobody ever asked her about the colours of her smallclothes, and it was never important, so she never shared.

Nat felt that the white was too bright, too clean, too spotless to wear against her body. She couldn’t shake the impression that if she left white fabric against her for too long, it would come away just that bit grimier, more dull than it had been before she touched it. She was aware that this particular habit was entirely psychological, but that awareness wasn’t enough to make her change it. And she wasn’t certain she wanted to shake the lingering feeling of dirtiness, really. It was a bit of a perverse desire to remember that she was at once capable of more and less than these shiny-bright people she found herself surrounded by (not all of them were shiny-bright, but The Black Widow tended to be less so than almost all of them). For this same reason, though, she didn’t own any white couches or bedsheets (although she let Stark think that it was because it was easier to hide bloodstains on black), and why she was always aware of Steve Rogers.

Steve was probably the closest thing a person could get to being a representation of the colour white one could be and still be able to work for SHIELD, doing what he did. Nat never stood too close to him in any personal setting, always close enough to be polite and companionable, but no closer.

This black and white dichotomy was enough for a little part of her ever-working mind to note and find ironic, as the two of them stood in Sam Wilson’s spare room, having used his shower, Nat in her black tank top, per usual, and Steve in a white undershirt.


End file.
